Philip Luty

Philip Andrew Luty (19 October 1964 – 8 April 2011) was an English gun rights activist, who was notable for the production of homemade firearms and manuals providing instruction at the same time. He was charged with illegal arms construction in the late 1990s and sentenced to four years in prison, with other investigations ongoing at the time of his death.

Weapons based on Luty's designs have been used or found in numerous recorded incidents of criminal or terrorist activity, including criminal groups in Australia, Brazil, Romania, Sweden, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, with terrorist organizations in Indonesia, Myanmar and in the 2019 Halle synagogue shooting, an antisemitic terror incident in Germany.

Life

Philip Andrew Luty was born in Leeds on October 19, 1964. He grew up on a farm in West Yorkshire, England.

Luty campaigned for the free possession of firearms and published instructions on self-built fully automatic weapons that can be produced by simple metalworking. Luty understood his work as a protest against the British government's strict gun control policies, which he described as fascist. He was charged with illegal arms construction in the late 1990s and sentenced to four years in prison in 1998.

Two copies of the original 'Luty SMG 9mm Parabellum' are part of the collection of the British National Firearms Centre (NFC) and are exhibited in Leeds at the Royal Armouries Museum.